


Anuptaphobia

by Roll4Seduction



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Altered Mental States, Character Redemption, Corruption, F/F, Guilt, Mental Health Issues, POV Third Person, Post-Season/Series 03, Spoilers, Steven Universe spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-11-29 06:18:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11434932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roll4Seduction/pseuds/Roll4Seduction
Summary: Corruption can't be cured by healing a gem's body. While the body may be weak, it is only a physical reminder of their broken hearts and shattered minds. Steven hasn't given up on finding a cure. Feeling responsible in part for Jasper's corruption, Steven decides to do whatever he can to help her. As if healing a corrupted gem were not already a near impossible goal, things become more challenging when the Gems discover that Pearl is the only one Jasper will let close. Will Pearl be able to get through to her when no one else can, or is Jasper too far gone?





	Anuptaphobia

It’s dark, darker than a night with no moonlight. He can’t remember anything. Where is he? How did he get here? Steven spins in place, for something, for someone, for some source of light. Behind him, he sees a glimmer. Sunlight. His breath catches in his throat. Feet shuffle anxiously. He longed for refuge from the darkness.

“Hello-oh?” Steven realizes that there is no echo or escape for his voice, no room for distortion, but the voice from his mouth is not his own. It’s too deep, too gruff, and too mature. Squinting into the light, he dares take a step in the direction of daylight, but is stopped when something hard, a boulder or something, blocks his way forward. “What is this?” He asks no one. He gropes around in the darkness, turning until he’s facing the light again. He was surrounded by rock, completely encased. Had he been buried, he wonders?

Panicked by the thought, Steven begins to struggle against his stone prison, raising a fist to slam against the wall leading to that light. The wall smashing into a roughly estimated hundred stones and pebbles was the desired, albeit unexpected effect. Was he imagining it or was he stronger than usual? A glance at his extended fist answers that question for him. For starters, his arm was four times its usual length, muscled, and striped with a pattern all too familiar. Steven gasps, rushing from the place he’d been trapped in and turning on his heel to find it was little more than a hole in a cliffside.

“Jasper!” She wasn’t there, in fact she wasn’t anywhere. Rather, she was here, and more specifically, him. “Oh my gosh!” Steven stands, mouth agape, legs spread as wide as his shoulders as he stares down to observe his strange new form. “I’m… possessing Jasper?” Her voice speaking his words confirmed the body’s identity, but something still didn’t feel right. “Wait, no, that’s impossible.” He reminds himself. He couldn’t possibly be possessing Jasper. She was bubbled away in the temple and

… Corrupted. 

But from a glance at her arms, he’d say she was perfectly fine. Looking back at the remains of his prison, he notices that it has changed shape. It’s no longer a mere hole in the earth, rather, a gem’s exit hole. Peering around, Steven realizes he’s woken up in the Beta kindergarten. Furthermore, he was Jasper, pre-corruption, right outside of her emersion point. What could all of this mean? It was impossible that he was possessing her, so he was either thinking all of this up himself or maybe--

“Jasper,” a whisper of a voice Steven does not recognize sounds from behind him. He does not know the voice, in all of its feminine tenderness, but its sound touching his ears summons an instantaneous physical reaction. He straightens his posture, his hands bending subconsciously into the diamond salute while tears well in his eyes. He’s frozen, the figure standing at his back, towering over him, and blotting out the light in its grand magnitude.

“You could have done something.” Says the voice, still whispy and far-away sounding despite its close proximity. The walls of the kindergarten shake--no, shiver, at the woman’s words, and Steven’s posture falters. He feels like he should be hiding, but he’s stuck. Something was keeping him there, like someone else wanted to hear what she had to say, someone controlling his limbs as if he were some type of marionette. What was this feeling that binds him? What was this crushing guilt he feels welling up in the pit of his anatomy?

“You could have protected me.” The voice takes on a tone of sorrow, emotion filling it to the brim and transforming it. She no longer sounds like a whisper or a ghost. She’s suddenly so very present, so very there. 

“No,” Steven whispers, the word feeling foreign and wrong on Jasper’s lips.

“I cared for you. I made you. So why?” She asks, a strain in her tone that made Steven imagine she was crying. 

“No, wait, please, I wasn’t there!” Steven attempts in self defense, the tears welling high enough to blur his vision as his limbs were finally given freedom. He turns to meet the eyes of this emotional assailant and is surprised to find only her feet, bare and pink. Steven’s heart sinks. His gaze shoots up to find the sorrowful face of

“My Diamond,” Steven’s body is under his own control, but the words from his mouth were suddenly not his own. Someone was speaking through him. “Please!” Begs the entity using his mouth.

“You failed me then. And now you’ve failed me again…” The diamond sobs. “Such grievous injury was done to me, and you cannot so much as avenge my scattered shards!” She wails, the kindergarten crumbling around them, turning to dust, and falling away, leaving them there, just the two of them, in a pit of darkness, as if they had been suspended in space.

“You’re disgusting. Tainted by this planet and its filth. You allowed yourself to be conquered by the enemy.” The diamond spits venomously, her tears, continuing to flow, but not in anger. Her hands fly out at her sides, slamming down on Jasper’s body and catching her up into the air. Being so forcefully lifted causes the boy to cry out in alarm. Steven overpowers the voice inside of him, a whisper now reverberating in his skull, and forces out a string of his own words. 

“We didn’t conquer her! And I’m sure we didn’t mean to hurt you! Please listen!” He yells. 

She glowers, “No wonder they never want to stay.”

“What?” At that moment, an ear piercing screech stuns him into silence. The next thing he perceives is the feeling of giant fingernails digging into his ribs and back. “Aah-aaaaah! Please Stop!” They (Steven and the voice inside) scream together. 

“You’re Worthless!” Steven’s vision goes dark, and it takes him only a moment to realize what’s happened. That giant woman, the diamond, Pink Diamond, poofed him (or her?). He’d never felt what it was like to get poofed. He never knew you disappeared like this.

A lone, angular jasper gemstone falls to the ground, devoid of form. There is no diamond, no kindergarten, no stones, and again only one source of light, and that was coming from the gem itself. It emits a soft glow, growing gradually brighter before exploding violently. What reformed from the gem was nothing short of horrific. “Gruughh… hhhyyyuuuuuhhh…!” He can’t speak. All he can do is groan in confusion, his mind overwhelmed by fear. He wanders in the darkness, tormented, until the inky blackness beneath him gave way to yet another degree of nothingness. And that nothingness consumes him. Slowly, like a tide rolling in, until he is truly nothing.

-

Steven’s eyes move rapidly beneath his eyelids, mouth hanging slack with a pool of dribble to the left of his face. He awoke with a sharp intake of breath, inhaling spit as he springs to an upright position. He coughs, eyes wide with confusion and discomfort, a single tear forming in his left eye as a result of the choking. “Ah,” cough. “Ugh.” He wipes his crying eye. “What was that?” 

A quick look around the room told him it was early and the others hadn’t left their rooms yet. There was only silence. He lets his gaze fall to his hands, still clutching at his sheets. His brows draw together in thought. If the last year were any indication of the importance of his dreams, he has no reason to assume that this dream is any different. It was too vivid, he decides. If it were only a dream it would have been different. He remembers hearing somewhere that it was impossible for the human mind to dream of something it had never seen either in movies, artwork, or real life. He can’t be sure that applies to him as an alien hybrid, but he’s positive that there was more to this matter than meets the eye. That dream most certainly had to have been a vision of some sort. Could it be that he had been accessing Jasper’s dormant consciousness deep within the temple? And if he had, that meant that she still has a consciousness to speak of. Maybe she’s ready.  
“Maybe she wants my help,” he thinks.

Needing no more convincing, Steven ignores his better judgement and makes his way down into the temple’s core room where all bubbled gems are kept safe. Steven spares the Crystal Gem’s “conquests” as his dream had termed it with a deep frown. Someday, he was going to get them all out of here if it was the last thing he did. No matter how long it took. A lot of them used to be Crystal Gems themselves. He owes it to them as the reincarnation of their leader, he figures. Shaking his head, Steven returns to the task at hand with a renewed sense of determination and searches for Jasper.

Jasper’s gem is unique and familiar, which makes it easy to find. “Hi,” he waves even though he knows she can’t see him. He doesn’t know if she can hear him. He assumes she can’t, but opts for talking to her anyway, trying to be soothing in any way he can. “I’m sorry you’ve been having nightmares. Oh-and I’m sorry for going into your dreams without your permission.” Steven pushes himself into the air with a hop to reach Jasper’s bubble. He takes the translucent sphere into his petite hands and is pleased to find that, upon closer inspection, the gemstone itself doesn’t appear to have changed in the slightest. Mutated and corrupted gems often have discolored or warped gemstones, like the corruption sinks so deep it changes them at their core. Jasper’s gem didn’t show even the slightest touch of discoloration. Understanding as little as he does about corruption, Steven can’t confirm this makes any difference, but he can assume and hope.

“I would have, uh, asked you if I knew it was happening.” He murmurs, placing a hand on either side of the bubble and taking a breath. Okay, if he’s going to talk to her for real and ask her what’s wrong, he’s going to need to pop the bubble and let her out. So, before he can talk any sense into himself, he does just that, staring wide eyed as the bubble bursts and Jasper’s gem floats away from him and toward an area of the room large enough for her to take form, toward the center. As Jasper forms, in the back of his mind, Steven finds he cannot perish the thought that Garnet was going to be upset with him for this.

-

The temple is woken this morning to a rumble in the Earth. At irregular intervals the ground briefly quakes. The entrance to the temple where Steven sleeps trembles like the support beams of the little house had been kicked in, ignoring of course that the house did not collapse after the alleged impact. The shaking of their home was so pronounced in fact that the Gems come flying from their rooms in near synchronous, Pearl and Garnet with their weapons at the ready, Amethyst choking on something she must have swallowed in haste. Amethyst, seeing her comrades weapons, draws one of her whips and wipes her mouth.

“What’s happening, guys? Everybody felt that, right?” Asks Amethyst, turning to Garnet for answers. Garnet, upon confirming that there was no immediate threat in the main part of the house, dispels her gauntlets and adjusts her visor. There is a pause before she answers. 

“Something’s gotten loose inside the temple,” She looks towards Steven’s bed, taking note of his absence. “And if I had to guess, I would say that Steven is behind this.” Their leader’s briefing of the situation has Pearl clutching her spear to her chest and groaning at the ceiling.

“Why does he always feel the need to do these things without consulting us?” She asks, her expression one of concern. Steven was mature and capable for his age, so Pearl doesn’t doubt he can handle most things by himself, but that doesn’t mean he should have to. Besides, letting monsters loose in the temple was something that should probably be discussed with the team beforehand. 

“I’ll have a talk with him later. For now Steven probably needs our help. Crystal Gems, move out.” Garnet’s calm and level headed orders are accepted and the other two follow her back into the temple and down to the holding room.

**Author's Note:**

> This will be the first fanfiction I've written and shared publicly since I was fourteen and still going through my cringey weeaboo Naruto phase. As such, it is likely that my prose writing is slightly out of practice, so constructive critique is welcomed and appreciated.
> 
> Updates will be irregular at first. I'm still trying to get my bearings with writing chapter books rather than short stories.  
> Edit: I tried fixing the spacing a bit. Hopefully things are less confusing now!
> 
> Thanks for Reading!


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